News

2024/12/17

Toray to Install Pilot Facility to Establish Mass Production Technology for All-Carbon CO2 Separation Membrane

Tokyo, Japan, December 17, 2024 – Toray Industries, Inc., announced today that it will install a pilot facility for its all-carbon carbon dioxide (CO2) separation membrane (see glossary note 1) at its Shiga Plant.

The new facility should become operational in the fiscal year starting April 1, 2025. Toray will use it to establish mass production technology for CO2 separation membranes. The company will collaborate with biogas and natural gas production developers, related engineering manufacturers, and other external partners to validate the results, with a view to putting CO2 separation membrane elements (glossary note 2) to practical use in the following fiscal year.

CO2 emissions from natural gas are relatively low when burned, so its use as a stable energy source should continue to grow.

In recent years, an emphasis on developing gas fields with low CO2 concentrations has heightened demand for more efficient CO2 separation and recovery technology in view of a need to exploit gas fields with higher residual CO2 concentrations.

It will be vital to develop technologies that can efficiently separate and recover CO2 from biogas derived from biomass, which is a mixture of methane and CO2, and from waste gases containing nitrogen and CO2, using these technologies for carbon capture and storage (glossary note 3) and carbon capture and utilization (glossary note 4).

Toray research laboratories confirmed the high separation performance and durability of its proprietary all-carbon CO2 separation membrane in gas environments containing impurities.

The company has refined its hollow fiber spinning and thin-layer coating technologies, establishing a film production process capable of producing consistently stable membranes. Simultaneously, it developed core technology for manufacturing membrane elements that bundle CO2 separation membranes. Using small membrane elements it created, the company successfully demonstrated CO2 separation from biogas and exhaust gas emissions at its Tokai Plant, maintaining consistent CO2 separation performance for a full week.

This demonstration confirmed the technology's applicability for separating methane and nitrogen from CO2. Additionally, the biogas used at the Tokai Plant during the demonstration contained more than 1,000 parts per million of aromatic hydrocarbons alongside CO2, for a composition similar to that of natural gas. The technology should find wide-ranging applications, not only in biogas but also in natural gas production and in enhancing the efficiency of CO2 separation for CCS and CCU, where CO2 separation is essential.

In leveraging the new pilot facility to establish mass production technology, Toray looks to upscale prototypes and conduct demonstration tests working closely with biogas, natural gas production development companies, and diverse other partners to accelerate efforts towards practical application.

In keeping with its corporate philosophy of contributing to society by creating new value with innovative ideas, technologies, and products, Toray will keep helping to resolve environmental, resources, and energy issues and continue to pursue R&D to achieve carbon neutrality.

Note: Toray obtained some results under projects that the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization commissioned and subsidized.

Glossary

1.  An all-carbon CO₂ separation membrane owes its high performance to a dual layer structure, comprising a thin carbon film separation layer on the surface of a hollow-fiber porous carbon-fiber support. Making the support as thin as possible reduces the membrane module’s weight and size.  

All-carbon CO₂ separation membrane:

2.  A CO₂ separation membrane element bundles all-carbon CO₂ separation membranes within a housing. It allows the independent recovery of gases that permeate the membrane and those that do not. Densely packing hollow fiber CO₂ separation membranes inside the element enables a more compact design by making it possible to increase the membrane surface area per unit volume.

3.  Carbon capture and storage separates CO₂ from other emissions at power, chemical, and other plants, collecting it and storing it or injecting deep underground.

4.  Carbon capture and utilization uses separated and stored CO₂. Converting hydrogen from renewable energy into valuable resources is under consideration as a social initiative.

Category

Headline News